Why "Ownership" is Critical to your User Engagement Strategy
Jinfo Blog

By Sean Smith

Abstract

Great content and technology are not enough. Successful information projects need bulletproof user engagement strategies. "Ownership" is an essential element. InfoDesk advocates "partnering for success" to ensure optimal results.

Item

"Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan." So goes the old saying. This is especially true of information projects. When they're successful, everyone is happy. Vendors and project managers, even senior management teams are all quick to claim credit.

What about all the failed information projects? No one ever writes whitepapers or gives presentations about those projects. Instead they're usually buried without so much as an autopsy.

Developing User Engagement

For many such information projects, the proximate cause of death would be a "failure to influence user behaviour". In other words, whether the project involved new content, new technology or both, ultimately the killer was "insufficient usage".

Probe a little deeper and you'll probably find that everyone involved underestimated the time, resources and planning that needed to go into developing and implementing effective user engagement strategy. And even sound user engagement strategies can run aground without clearly defined ownership.

Partnering for Success

One of the biggest mistakes companies and vendors make on information projects is assuming "everyone will use it". They don't put enough thought into how they will convince users to change their behaviour. Nor do they look closely enough at who is going to use it.

InfoDesk, a leading provider of B2B information management solutions has learned - through trial and error - that the best approach is to partner with clients to provide as much as guidance as possible to ensure the best results.

By sharing ownership with the client InfoDesk is able to impart years of experience and share best practices. Rather than relying solely on the client's initiative, InfoDesk provides templates and timelines for email series and other internal communications to promote the project at every stage - from launch to gathering feedback and assessing ROI.

User Engagement Is Not an Afterthought

Accordingly, information project managers and vendors are better off anticipating resistance and working together to build a bulletproof user engagement strategy that addresses the following areas:

• Goals and expectations
• Ownership and execution
• Efforts and timeline
• Benchmarks and ROI.

To learn more about what goes into developing a bulletproof user engagement strategy for your next information project, read "Partnering For Success - Effective User Engagement Is No Accident" by Sean Smith, vice president of marketing for InfoDesk.

This Blog Item is part of the FreePint Topic Series "Making Information Visible".

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